Photo: Ekko Von Schwichow
Jonathan Carroll was born in 1949 in New York. His father was a screenwriter; his mother an actress and lyricist.
He attended Rutgers University then the University of Virginia. He became an English teacher,
eventually moving to the American International School in Vienna, Austria in 1974.
Carroll still lives in Vienna with his family.

Land of Laughs (1980)
Ace / Viking / Orion
Thomas Abbey is the lonely child of a famous movie
actor. Grown up, he's a prep school teacher who is fascinated
by the work of Marshall France, a legendary author of children's
books who wrote The Land of Laughs, Green Dog's Sorrow, and other haunting
classics. France had retreated from the world and hidden himself
away in tiny Galen, MO before dying of a heart attack at age 44.
Tom Abbey meets a fellow France aficionado, Saxony Gardner, and
woos her. Together, they decide to write a biography of France
and arrive in Galen on a slow, summer day; expectant, delighted,
and a little trepidacious of what they might find.
To their surprise, the town has been waiting for them. Slowly, they begin
to realize that this small Midwest town and its inhabitants, human and animal, are not
what they seem. The magic of Marshall France had extended far beyond the printed page.

Voice of our Shadow (1982)
Viking / Arrow Books
Joe Lennox is an ordinary man, raised in
a New York suburb and striving to make his way as a writer.
For him, Vienna is not just one of the alluring cities of Europe but a
refuge in time and place from a childhood tragedy.
Joe's older brother, Ross, had taunted him as they played near a
subway line and, touching the third rail, died instantly.
However, he lives on in Joe's lonely guilt and dreams. In
Vienna, Joe develops a friendship with Paul and India Tate,
and their destinies become intertwined. Joe again becomes
haunted by betrayal and death, and is forced to face how the
thin the membrane between the demons of the soul and the unseen really is.

Bones of the Moon (1987)
Century / Arbor House
Cullen James' first dream was to find the perfect man.
Finding him, she dreamed of being able to live with him in
Europe while they were both still young and full of wonder. That
happened too. Continuing to dream, she became pregnant
and looked forward to the day when the child would come and she
could love it, make it part of her life.
Then, the dreams changed and showed her a fantastical land called Rondua
where the sea is full of fish with names like Mudrake, Cornsweat and Yasmuda.
Where enormous animals, the size of hot air balloons, escort Cullen
and an enigmatic child companion across places like the Plain of
Forgotten Machines. And, with the dreams of Rondua, come powers that
cross over into her day-world and change everything.

Sleeping in Flame (1988)
Legend / Doubleday
Walker Easterling has retired as an actor and screenwriter. He is living in
Vienna when he falls in love with Maris York, an artist and
beautiful model. To his chagrin, his life begins to come alive in odd
and unsettling ways. As Walker's love for Maris deepens, life
gets more and more bizarre. He discovers he can see things
happening just before they happen as, simultaneously, he feels an
incredibly strong tug from his past. Steered to
Venasque, an odd little man reputed to be a powerful shaman,
Walker is helped to discover and to unravel his many interconnected past
lives. Soon, it is obvious an unresolved conflict from these past
lives has resurfaced. And it threatens to destroy Walker and Maris' love.

A Child Across the Sky (1989)
Century Legend / Doubleday
Weber Gregston and Philip Strayhorn are best friends. They
went to college together; they struggled as nobodies in
Hollywood together. Gregson soon becomes the most acclaimed
director of his generation. Phil remains unrecognised for years, but
then makes a series of notorious horror films, giving him everything.
One day, he takes a gun and blows his head off.
Why? Weber hopes the answer is on the video tapes that Phil
left behind. Step by step, Weber learns that the evil Phil
portrayed in his last film is not just slasher gore. Phil created
something which threatens his friends' lives, and if Weber
doesn't fix it fast, that evil will extend far beyond a
handful of people in Hollywood.

Outside the Dog Museum (1991)
Macdonald / Doubleday
Harry Radcliffe is a brilliant prize-winning architect and
a witty, remarkable man. He is also a self-serving opportunist, ready
to take advantage of whatever situation come his way.
One day, Harry is pursued by the extremely
wealthy Sultan of Saru, who wants him to design a very special
building. The Sultan, fearing imminent assassination, wants to
build the ultimate monument in the form of a billion-dollar Dog Museum.
Harry is at an odd point in his life following a recent divorce,
an inexplicable nervous breakdown and the complexities of
juggling with the affections of two women. He decides to do it.
On his arrival in Saru, he learns that the Sultan is no more but his
son and heir wants the project to continue: not in the Arabian desert, as previously agreed, but
a remote corner of the Austrian Alps. Little does
Harry realize what he is now in the process of creating.

Black Cocktail (1990)
Century Legend / St. Martins
More like a novella, this work follows Ingram York who has a friend,
Michael Billa. Michael is the sort of friend whose funny tales and charm can pull
you out of the lowest depths and make life good once more.
Along comes Clinton Deix, a friend of Michael's, who tells
Ingram that most of those stories are lies. It isn't long
before Ingram doesn't know who to believe, and what most
confuses and upsets him is that both say they are
old school chums. But Michael is in his late thirties while Clinton is still fifteen...

After Silence (1993)
Doubleday
Pushing forty, Max Fisher is a successful LA cartoonist. Scarred by recent
affairs, he is cautious yet intrigued when he meets Lily Aaron and her son
Lincoln. As Max spends more time with them, he falls hoplessly in love.
Max thinks he may have found the perfect mate, the perfect child;
and they seem to love him, too. But all is not perfect. After Max moves in,
he discovers Lily has committed a terrible crime, and has been
running from the truth for years. Max is suddenly faced with making the most
difficult decision of his life: should he right Lily's wrong and sacrifice his
adoptive family or should he look away from the truth?

Novels

From the Teeth of Angels (1994)
HarperCollins / Doubleday
On holiday in Sardinia, Ian McGann goes to sleep one
night and meets Death in a dream. It promises to answer any
of McGann's questions, but if he fails to understand the
answers he will have to pay with his life.
In Hollywood, a famous actress, Arlen Ford, realizes at the
height of her career that she is lost in her life.
To save herself, she gives it all up and flees
to Europe, where she meets war correspondent Leland Zivic.
Arlen finds an all-consuming relationship; she has been waiting for this man all her life.
And in Vienna, Wyatt Leonard, terminally ill, suddenly
discovers that he has the ability to raise the dead.
The novel follows the fates of all three as they converge.

Kissing the Beehive (1998)
Doubleday / Orion
Sam Bayer is spinning his wheels. He's past his third divorce, he's bored with writing
formulaic best-sellers (oh my!), and he's missed his latest deadline. A visit to his
home town ignites his missing spark. He meets a fan, Veronica Lake, who is gorgeous but
a little odd, and falls into a girl's old murder case. When he was a teenager, Sam had found the body,
and now his daughter is in jeopardy when the murderer reappears. Then things get really weird.

The Marriage of Sticks (1999)
Victor Gollancz / Tor
This novel is told in first person by Miranda, a rare book dealer, who delights in finding
that one book her customers can't live without. She's a popular, attractive woman who loves her lucrative career
which allows her to travel a good part of the year. Miranda's new lover, Hugh Oakley, leaves his family
for her only to disappear from her life. She has a visit from an unborn child who betrays her, hurts
her. She knows her home is going to burn down but she doesn't
own a house. She sees a strikingly familiar wheelchair-bound woman abandoned on the freeway but she doesn't stop to help.
It is only after she meets and is befriended by Frances Hatch does she begin to realize what the future
holds and how she'll be judged. Frances is as "old as the hills", a plain-talker who doesn't have the time to dither with people.

The Wooden Sea (2001)
Victor Gollancz / Tor
Frannie McCabe is the sheriff and thereby in charge around town. Or, at least, he's
supposed to be able to control what's going on. One day, a 3-legged dog dies in front of him. Little does
he know how this sad event is going to profoundly change things. It comes in the form of a student thought dead by suicide
telling him she didn't do it, finding the buried dog in the trunk of his car, meeting himself as a teenager who has come
to warn him, finding himself occupying his own body far in the future, punching what may be an angel in the schnoze and then
what may be aliens from space show up. Oh yeah... Frannie has to save the world by the weekend.

White Apples (2002)
Victor Gollancz / Tor
Vincent Ettrich is dead but he doesn't know it yet. He runs into a business acquaintance who seems surprised to see him. But when
Vincent finds out that Bruno is dead, he concludes that life has definitely taken an odd turn. Finally convinced that he too
has shrugged off this mortal coil, Vincent is adrift until he discovers that his girl friend may be an alien.
And, if things couldn't get worse, Vincent's one true love, Isabelle Neukor, is arriving on a flight from Vienna, pregnant with their child.

Glass Soup (2005)
Tor
A sequel to White Apples, Glass Soup follows Isabelle, who has made it back to the realm
of the living with her dead lover, Vincent Ettrich. Still carrying Vincent's child, Anjo, she must give birth to him
here. For the child is one who might be able to foil the plans of "Chaos," a godlet who is hell-bent upon
severing the mortal world and that of the afterlife. It's possible to do this by being born of a dead father in the land of the living.

Collections

The Panic Hand (1996) / Die Panische Hand (1989)

The two anthologies,The Panic Hand and
Die Panische Hand, collect the following stories:A Bear in the Mouth The Dead Love You The Fall Collection A Flash in the Pants Florian Friend's Best Man The Jane Fonda Room Learning to Leave The Life of My Crime Mr. Fiddlehead My Zoondel The Panic Hand Postgraduate A Quarter Past You The Sadness of Detail Tired Angel Waiting to Wave A Wheel in the Desert, the Moon on Some Springs